


The myriad needs

by Roadstergal



Category: Firefly
Genre: Entropy, Implied/Referenced Incest, Jealousy, Love, Neurodiversity, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 18:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4716722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River has needs, like anyone else.  She's just better at playing the long game when it comes to satisfying them.  A vignette following Objects In Space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The myriad needs

That was all they were, when it came down to definitions.  No matter the identities they clung to so desperately, their warmth and spite, their coupling and uncoupling, their dreams waking and sleeping – they were just one object, from outside.  A small object, drifting from one solar system to another in the massive gap of nothing between, the hard vacuum of deep space. Well, not _quite_ a vacuum. Neutrinos, photons, gamma rays, flitting about, gently touching the subatomic strings that laced through the nothingness. But it was as near a vacuum as was practical to consider, and wasn't that what mattered? The _practical_. The cat when the box was open. It was pointless, closed, just an eigenstate as useless to consider as Book’s inane question about angels dancing on the head of a pin.  River knew how to dance.  That mattered more.

 

River knew how cold it was outside, could taste it through the battered metal - a sink that tried to suck the warmth out of their little object. Serenity was sturdy despite all of the abuse she had endured, holding the _nothing_ at bay - a simple, reliable, understandable object filled with needlessly complicated ones. Serenity was Kaylee's love – so obvious, the touches, the whispers, the kisses - and River understood that. Serenity was _predictable_. Touch here, there - the resonances were easy to trace, the responses ordered and correct. The life that hummed through it was directed, purposeful, rewarding so directly all of the care and love it was given.

 

So why, then, with this love in place, did Kaylee crave an unpredictable object?

 

Simon _should_ be predictable, River knew. He had been so very predictable when they were little, and seemed to remain so as they grew.  She knew how to touch him, make him resonate, even from such a distance - intrigue him, circle him with subtle words, bring him to help her. Rescue her.

 

Yet he had developed entropy, integrated it into himself, let it infect him.  Variolation against the chaos for which there was no vaccine.  It had conferred on him a frustrating unpredictability, one she could now count in scars - on his arm, his back, his formerly neat and smooth chest, the little bullet scar on his leg that Kaylee loved to trace when they lay in bed together after the sweating and grunting. River could never resist skating through their minds then, the feeling as sickly sweet as the wine Book sometimes let her have half a glass of; tempting and pleasing, yet vomit-worthy in too great a serving. It was a very different feeling from when Mal and Simon sometimes sweated and grunted briefly, hurriedly, thinking nobody knew, nobody saw – it was something Simon was ashamed of, but River wasn't sure why.

 

And why weren't Simon and Kaylee ashamed of _their_ coupling? This would all be so much simpler if they were. River could give him that sort of pleasure, the sort Kaylee did – and do it better, she knew.  River and Simon weren't supposed to touch and grunt like that, River knew - the societal taboos were obvious, solid, pervasive. But it was a taboo based on the fear of flawed children, and Kaylee had hormones in plastic in her arm that prevented children, so weren't they under the same taboo?  River could prevent children.

 

Complicated objects, all of them. More complicated than Serenity. And there was a certain joy in the challenge the complexity embodied, something frustrating in equal measure to the joy.

 

Was _that_ what appealed to Kaylee?

 

"Hey, girl!" Kaylee snapped her fingers, "back on board! It's your turn!"

 

River glanced up from the ball in her hand, turning it in her hand still, slowly, careflly. It had imperfections, flaws in its casting, a heaviness to one side that River could quantitate in an instant. It would be easy to win; the physics were simple, after all.  The spherical object, the angles, the gravity, all under River’s control.

 

This time, for now, she wouldn't win. And would look to see what effect it had on Kaylee.


End file.
